Furthermore, studies have not found a relationship between growth and IT spending at the industry level. And given that system failures, project delays, and other regular setbacks are all too common, it is sense that leaders are wondering, "What are we getting for our money?"

Some CIOs have created better IT management solutions to get ahead of this awkward line of inquiry. Developing goals that are genuinely based in the enterprise strategy and the business's destination, establishing a structured approach to prioritization, advocating for a new enterprise operating model that places an emphasis on accountability for broadly defined tech and business "products," utilizing improved telemetry to measure and track the appropriate metrics, and creating an environment that fosters transparency and collaboration are all typical features of a tech management system.

Naturally, no two banks are the same, so no two systems are the same. However, certain ideas are universally applicable.

The way CIOs create objectives and prioritize tasks, including particular Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), and integrate them into an information system that reaches the scrum teams, is the basis of the management system. This need for strong strategic prioritization frameworks, a common knowledge of the destination, and procedures for alignment between the business and technology at all levels.

For instance, a fully-loaded cost-per-transaction should be used as the OKR to monitor if achieving scalability is crucial to the business model. Business and IT must collaborate closely on the plan in order to achieve this.

How to handle "moonshots," or large bets on futuristic technology with hazy short-term advantages, is a similar query. Investments in artificial intelligence (AI), modernizing data platforms, and cloud computing are a few examples. The CEO and board must be convinced to support these initiatives by the CIO. By collaborating with their business partners to develop a clear destination vision and establish accountability through incremental indicators of progress towards that destination, CIOs can strengthen their case.

In order to improve accountability, these management systems maintain their focus on results rather than activity and call for the company and technology to organize into a product-oriented operating model. Teams are tasked with managing "products" in a wide sense. These can be tangible goods like credit cards, experiences like opening an account, or technological elements like data products or the money transfer system. Every product is managed by a "mini-CEO," who has the power to act independently and take decisive action. In addition to developing the platform roadmap, negotiating goals with the company, and tracking ROI, this leader keeps an eye on the strategic landscape.

The coordination of these leaders through explicit processes and culture is then equally vital. Interdependent teams fall out of sync too frequently since they don't communicate with one another. To guarantee that all teams are functioning off of a shared contextual knowledge of progress, the operational model and a management information system (MIS) supporting it are required.

The product manager is the cornerstone of this operating model, ensuring that the team is carrying out the appropriate tasks in the appropriate manner. The product manager sets priorities for the team's backlog, handles dependencies with other teams, and oversees the entire product development lifecycle.

Knowing which efforts are profitable and how much they cost is crucial after all this work. In contrast, banking cannot be claimed to assess productivity in the same manner as advanced tech companies, which all do. We've discovered that a lot of bank IT departments don't keep track of KPIs like how much time is spent on development versus maintenance versus administrative tasks, what projects developers are working on, how many individuals are coding, or whether outside suppliers are producing work that meets expectations. A much more knowledgeable picture of the system's operation in real time is now possible thanks to advanced telemetry.

Because of all of this, an entirely new culture of engineering brilliance is created. Different from employee satisfaction or other HR surveys, the management solutions used by successful CIOs also describe and statistically assess the culture, allowing business and technology leaders to identify and quickly address the underlying issues. The enterprise's view of engineering as a craft that is vital to the business, along with transparency and meritocracy, makes a huge difference in the successful execution of initiatives.